Annoying

Having lived in (marvelous) Marin, I can visualize the places and scenery that Anne Lamott described in her essay ("Blessed Are the Annoying," May 7). And being the mother of a teenage boy, I could smell Sam's bedroom and experience the frustration of chores not done and promises going by the wayside because of sleeping or other teen-important activities. I appreciated Lamott's words of wisdom in "the four things I know for sure about raising kids," which told me that I have been affecting my son's character by overlooking all the things that are important to me, letting him go play beach volleyball instead of staying home to help me when I was sick.

If you are a parent who lets your children scream and go nuts on a plane, congratulations - you top the list of most annoying etiquette violators in the air. Parents who travel with loud children are considered more annoying than passengers who kick the in front of them and travelers with foul odors. Even fliers who take off their shoes and socks in the air-tight cabin are less offensive, according to a survey of 1,001 Americans by the travel website Expedia. Annoying children and their parents were ranked by 41% of those surveyed as the most annoying airplane etiquette violators.

I recently read your editorial "The Scoop on Ice Cream Trucks" (Nov. 9) concerning the ice cream truck vendor noise issues. You seem to be sympathetic to the vendors and implied that the noise is trivial. Unfortunately, my wife and I live in a middle-class neighborhood that is frequently visited by these vendors, especially on Saturday and Sunday between the hours of 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Several different vendors repeatedly will circle the neighborhood blaring their annoying jingles.

If you are a parent who lets your kids scream and go nuts on a plane - congratulations - you top the list of most annoying etiquette violators in the air. Parents who travel with loud kids are considered more annoying than passengers who kick the back of seats and travelers with nasty odors. Even fliers who take off their shoes and socks in the airtight cabin are less offensive, according to a survey of 1,001 Americans by the travel website Expedia.com. Annoying children and their parents were ranked by 41% of those surveyed as the most annoying airplane etiquette violators.

A man who offered money to two little girls to accompany him away from their homes was chased down and severely beaten by enraged parents, police said today. Martin Gamez, 26, of Tijuana offered the girls, one of them 6 years old, money to accompany him away from the Los Angeles apartment complex where they live, Sgt. Doug Tantee said. "The girls ran and told their parents, just as they should," Tantee said. A short time later, about 6 p.m. Tuesday, angry parents at the large apartment complex chased down Gamez and beat him, the sergeant said.

I'm here to please. Well, mostly I'm here to eat and drink. But if I can please the occasional Canadian while I'm here, all the better. Oh, get your mind out of the gutter. It's no secret that I adore this town, but Friday I took it a step further by seeking political asylum here in Canada, citing governmental persecution back home and an inability to make or keep friends. To prove how serious I am, I burned my U.S. passport in the bathtub one morning while yodeling "O Canada."

To the writers of last week's "Underrated" column: Thanks for tipping me off to mtvmusic.com. There's quite an extensive library of classic videos there. But there's just one problem: You won't be annoying your office mates with an Adam & the Ants marathon, because the website has only one Adam & the Ants video, "Stand & Deliver." Chuck Zaremba Oceanside

I was ready to pass right over yet another article on the annoying baby boom generation. Then I noticed that, having been born in 1963, I was included among this pathetic mob. Boomers were born into the richest country ever when it was at the pinnacle of its power, and what does the next generation get? Dan Quayle, a neutered Democratic Party and an endless stream of annoying television and classic rock revivals. I am not stardust or golden and, quite frankly, I'm sick of hearing about the garden.

Godfrey is fed up with those subscription cards that come tumbling out of magazines. Why do publishers bother using them? The publishing industry calls these things "blow-in" cards, and they've been around for years as a way to attract new subscribers. ASK LAZ: Smart answers to consumer questions In 2009, the New York Times reported that blow-in cards appeared to be falling out of favor as digital distribution grew. But there's not much evidence to back that up. So why does this pesky practice persist?

A simple request: Please stop calling Sarah Palin names. If you find her politics repellant and her intellectual gifts lacking, fine. Just say so. But stop with the verbal abuse and the debased revenge fantasies. Palin has always had a gift for making her critics crazy. But it's been five years since she was sprung from Alaskan obscurity as kind of “Hail Mary pass” for John McCain's faltering presidential dreams. Liberals: She can't hurt you anymore. It's time to get over her. Her career is about self-enrichment now, not politics. She's found a formula for financial success and continuing celebrity.

An influx of tourists clogging narrow, curving hillside streets for the perfect view of the Hollywood sign is irritating local residents who say the traffic is creating safety issues. The once-sleepy Hollywood tour bus business has become increasingly competitive . Just a few years ago there were only a few operators offering Hollywood sign viewing tours. Now, there are more than 40 tour companies running buses and vans in and out of the canyon. In response, fliers and signs have started to crop up in the neighborhoods most affected by the traffic.

What's an author assigned to sit next to a much more famous person (Gwyneth Paltrow) at a book signing to do? Write about it, of course. "Due to the inflexibility of the alphabet I had the questionable good fortune to be seated directly beside Gwyneth Paltrow," writes Christina Oxenberg on her website. The event was an authors night held by the East Hampton Library. The tony summer haven on Long Island boasts a long roster of both book-inclined celebrities and stars of the literary world: The event was co-founded by Alec Baldwin and its organizing committee includes bestselling thriller author Nelson DeMille, National Book Award-winning biographer Robert Caro, Orange Prize winning novelist A.M Homes and, yes, Gwyneth Paltrow.

I was sitting in bed reading Monday night when a hideous and unfamiliar noise jolted me upright. It seemed to be emanating from inside my room. It was a loud, insistent and intermittent, like a test of the emergency broadcast system, but my radio wasn't on. My adrenaline pumping, I finally looked down and realized the noise was coming out of my phone. But why? A text message on my screen seemed to be associated with the noise. It appeared to be an Amber Alert, with some context-free vehicle identification information.

Like most everyone with a late-model cellphone in the state of California, I was startled Monday night to hear my phone suddenly blaring like a fire alarm shortly after 11. What the…? Scrambling to calm it down, I saw AMBER Alert Boulevard, CA ( Where's that?) LIC/6WCU986 Blue Nissan Versa 4 door… In fact, I got the same text twice. After that, my first thought was: what do I do to stop getting anymore? How do I rejigger my iPhone so this doesn't happen again? That wasn't an unusual response among cellphone users, even to an alert of a child abduction. In this case, the alert was triggered by the suspected kidnapping of one or two children by a man also suspected of killing their mother, whose body was found in the burning rubble of a house in a rural community.

After being a viewer for many years of "The Today Show," I have switched to "Good Morning America" and sometimes "This Morning." The reason for this switch is Deborah Norville. I find her harsh, rapid speech annoying and her manner in general is a turn off. I know there may not be another Jane Pauley, but they certainly can do better than Norville. Bernice Bowers, Santa Clarita

I detect sympathy in your editorial "Let the Punishment Fit the Crime" (Sept. 27) regarding Hayes being sentenced to 155 days in jail for refusing (as always) to abide by the rules during certain public agency meetings; that Hayes is "an outspoken gadfly" and "no ordinary gadfly." (Personally, I think 155 days in the pokey is a bit much myself, but he broke probation and that's a different matter.) However, in concluding your editorial you say, "Gadflies can be annoying, but the self-appointed watchdogs have every right to express their opinions at public meetings."

If ABC Family executives had known their new game show "Spell-Mageddon" would be premiering in the social media vacuum left by "Sharknado," they might have considered throwing a few piranhas into the mix. As it is, the film and the series share little beyond titular portmanteau (blending two words to make one) and the attempt to blend two big ideas into an unexpected hybrid. On the hourlong "Spell-Mageddon," that looks like a group of contestants engaging in a spelling bee while running obstacle courses that are smaller, tamer versions of those on "Wipeout" and enduring the sort of wet 'n' messy interruptions that mark similar competitions on Nickelodeon.

Jim Nayder, a longtime fixture on Chicago public radio who was best known as the host and producer of National Public Radio's "Annoying Music Show," was found dead in his Chicago apartment Friday. He was 59. An autopsy was scheduled, but his family said Nayder had a long history of alcoholism and had checked into rehabilitation centers many times. The "Annoying Music Show" - a kind of wry celebration of kitsch, from William Shatner's cover of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" to "Muskrat Love" - ran less than five minutes and began as weekend filler on Chicago's WBEZ-FM in 1995.